XP Starter Edition

BBC: “Microsoft’s plan to impress new users with a cut-down version of Windows has come in for strong criticism. The software giant has created Windows XP Starter Edition for countries where the PC-owning population is still low. But analysts from consultancy Gartner said the cut-down version would be “frustrating” to use and warned firms and consumers to stay away from it. “

The big restriction to XP Starter Edition is that users can only have 3 applications running concurrently. What’s the rational thinking behind this?

Philip is a Computer Science PhD student at Liverpool John Moores University. He's still not mastered guitar tabs, never finished Mario, and needs a haircut. He discusses life at http://www.miseldine.com/.

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How often does any serious computer user (or hobbyist) have less than a handfull of (5 or more) apps open at the same time?

Hmmmm, this doesn’t sound like a good move for MS. As a matter of fact, if this is the first impression one gets, it makes any other OS look better.

Are you sure the Open Source movement isn’t behind this stripped down version of XP ;~>

http://www.ensight.org Jeremy W.

Gah. Whatever BBC, and whatever to you Phil. You should know that this was never targetted at people who were going to run multiple apps.

The rational thinking is simple: The starter version is cheap. If all you need is cheap, you get cheap. Home Edition is more expensive, for if you don’t need networking. Pro is for if you need networking.

3 stages. For 3 different types of users.

If you had a better idea for what they should have done to satisfy people who actually need an incredibly cheap version of Windows, let’s hear it.

Dangermouse

Get what you pay for i suppose.

http://www.realityedge.com.au mrsmiley

Sounds like a good investment for little kids to play with. My daughter (nearly 2), has the most annoying ability to load half a million programs on my computer that I rarely use, forcing them to do things I didn’t know were possible.

At least with this version, I can minimise damage to my desktop :D

That’s about the only use I can think for it. Even my mum uses more that 3 programs at once and she is by no means a power user. Then again, 3 isn’t really that bad. One for email, one for internet, one for word processing (or similar). While its painful for power users, I’m sure it could have its place in the market.

Developing countries in Asia who are on the wrong side of a digital divide?

They (MS) have targeted 5 countries: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and two other countries in Asia to distribute the OS bundled into select computer packages.

The XP Light computers will run a max of 3 programs and have no networking capabilities.

Are there enough people in this chosen demographic who will surf the web, log onto messenger and run some Mp3’s with Media player for this to be a winning proposition.

Originally I thought that this was about providing low cost (business) computing to areas that were unable to access the technology due to social or financial barriers but that obviously isn’t the story.

As mrsmiley says,
Sounds like a good investment for little kids to play with.

Is that the point of this exercise?

http://zimba.oree.ch zimba

explorer.exe + msn.exe + iexplore.exe and that’s it ?
what about all the spywares and services I want to run in background ? :p

http://www.miseldine.com miseldine

I don’t know. I mean, the target audience its aimed for, I mean, lets say a situation…

I read some email, while writing a letter, and listening to music. Thats my limit.

It seems too much of a restriction to make it worthwhile to sell well.